Reformed Church in America to take up gay issues at General Synod

HOLLAND -- The Reformed Church in America takes up gay issues and an apartheid-era anti-racism statement at a general meeting this week in Holland.

The 166,000-member church opens its General Synod on Thursday.

The agenda includes adoption of a document known as the Belhar Confession. It was drafted in 1982 during the struggle against the white supremacist system of apartheid in South Africa.

The church's Web site says the statement was an "outcry of faith" and "call for faithfulness and repentance."

The South African black rights leader Allan Boesak led the campaign for the Belhar Confession.

Last year, Boesak quit the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa after that synod rejected his assertion the Belhar supports full church participation of gays.

Church officials say consideration of the Belhar Confession could feed into the debate over homosexuality and the church.

"I've had many conversations with people across the denomination who are worried about that," synod President the Rev. Carol Bechtel said. She is a Western Theological Seminary professor.

Bechtel said the drafters of the statement "very deliberately left out the word 'apartheid' because they didn't want it eternally moored in that specific situation."

"One of the things I noticed in my travels is how the Belhar is not confined to the original context that gave it birth," she said.

Gay issues are directly on the synod's agenda in a report on a three-year dialogue on homosexuality. The report calls for continued discussion.

"We talked," Bechtel said. "We've learned a lot about how to talk. And we need to keep talking. That will frustrate some people at both ends of the spectrum, but this is where the Belhar is relevant.

"It counsels a kind of loving conversation that's firm, but open, as opposed to just lobbing Bible verses at each other. We're being called to genuine engagement and a patience with each other that is borne of a concern for unity and reconciliation."